France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
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Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#2Funny thing is that today, despite the fact that everybody has a broadband connection, Minitel is still used by some people. Specifically for the 2 usages that made its success in the first place : yellow pages and adult chat.
A few companies still make significant profit from this platform in 2011. And it's still profitable for France Telecom as well.
Low tech works :)
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#3Funny thing is that today, despite the fact that everybody has a broadband connection, Minitel is still used by some people. Specifically for the 2 usages that made its success in the first place : yellow pages and adult chat. A few companies still make significant profit from this platform in 2011. And it's still profitable for France Telecom as well. Low tech works :)
Sadly, the service will be discontinued soon (june 2012). I don't use it but I find it cool to have an alternative network like this.
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#4I'm from Tetalab, a hackerspace in Toulouse, France, and we still use the minitel for some hacks with arduino:
http://www.tetalab.org/images/tetalab/MSM.jpg
It's a neat interface, everybody here in France remember it from the 80's, and it quite easy to hack it.
We should soon release an arduino lib for eveybody to hack it, but it'll be quite hard to find a minitel if you're not in France (nobody use it anymore, it's quite easy to find second-hand, but surely heavy to ship...)
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#5I'm from Tetalab, a hackerspace in Toulouse, France, and we still use the minitel for some hacks with arduino: http://www.tetalab.org/images/tetalab/MSM.jpg It's a neat interface, everybody here in France remember it from the 80's, and it quite easy to hack it. We should soon release an arduino lib for eveybody to hack it, but it'll be quite hard to find a minitel if you're not in France (nobody use it anymore, it's…
C'est ou ça à Toulouse? J'habitais à Toulouse (l'hyper-centre) pendant trois ans.
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#6It makes me a bit sad to realize that even I remember minitel, though I grew up with the internet, and not in France -- not because I'm into tech history, but because in 2002, that's how old my high-school French textbook and its helpful cultural asides were.
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#7Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#8Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.
Wasn't "the internet" created by the gouvernment too?
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#9Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.
we soon go back to central planning with google or facebook dont worry :)))
Re: France's Minitel service in 1983: online banking, eshopping, and B2B
#10Everyone hailed Minitel in the 1980s. It was touted as an example of what gov't should do (these were also the days of Japan, Inc. kicking everyone's ass, also showing what gov't "should" do for industry). Yet along came the Black Swan of the Internet to slay it. Central planning never works.
Central planning never works.
But the Internet was the spin-off of a centrally planned government network. I am not sure it's accurate to say the failure of "competing" services was due to the failures of central planning, but more related to the onward march of technology(cheaper & faster). Even now the Internet is far from decentralized & some of the biggest services on the Internet are centralized and proprietary.